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. 2010 Oct;3(5):214-25.
doi: 10.1002/aur.147.

Perception of emotion in musical performance in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders

Anjali Bhatara  1 , Eve-Marie Quintin, Bianca Levy, Ursula Bellugi, Eric Fombonne, Daniel J Levitin
Affiliations

Perception of emotion in musical performance in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders

Anjali Bhatara et al. Autism Res. 2010 Oct.

Abstract

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are impaired in understanding the emotional undertones of speech, many of which are communicated through prosody. Musical performance also employs a form of prosody to communicate emotion, and the goal of this study was to examine the ability of adolescents with ASD to understand musical emotion. We designed an experiment in which each musical stimulus served as its own control while we varied the emotional expressivity by manipulating timing and amplitude variation. We asked children and adolescents with ASD and matched controls as well as individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) to rate how emotional these excerpts sounded. Results show that children and adolescents with ASD are impaired relative to matched controls and individuals with WS at judging the difference in emotionality among the expressivity levels. Implications for theories of emotion in autism are discussed in light of these findings.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Russell’s (1980) circumplex model of affect, modified to include “lack of emotion” at the center.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Emotionality ratings of the musical performances by expressivity level and diagnosis (ASD, TD and WS)
Figure 3
Figure 3
Figures 3a, b, and c. Emotionality ratings by tonality (major vs. minor) and expressivity level for (a) ASD, (b) TD and (c) WS
Figure 3
Figure 3
Figures 3a, b, and c. Emotionality ratings by tonality (major vs. minor) and expressivity level for (a) ASD, (b) TD and (c) WS
Figure 3
Figure 3
Figures 3a, b, and c. Emotionality ratings by tonality (major vs. minor) and expressivity level for (a) ASD, (b) TD and (c) WS
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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